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Full-Text Articles in Law

Navigating Beyond The Lodestar: Borrowing The Federal Sentencing Guidelines To Provide Fee-Shifting Predictability, Matthew Ahn Dec 2022

Navigating Beyond The Lodestar: Borrowing The Federal Sentencing Guidelines To Provide Fee-Shifting Predictability, Matthew Ahn

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

The lodestar has been the dominant calculation method for fee-shifting awards for nearly 40 years. But the lodestar has numerous persistent issues: it leads to extra litigation and judicial effort, it results in highly variable fee awards, and it incentivizes plaintiffs’ attorneys to bill extravagantly and reject settlement. This Article argues that these issues with the lodestar, along with many others, result from a mismatch between the lodestar and the purpose of the underlying fee-shifting statutes, which is to encourage attorneys to bring suits that would not normally be economically viable. Encouraging attorneys to do so requires the fee awards …


Winning The Battle But Losing The War: Towards A More Consistent Approach To Prevailing Party Fee Shifting In The Contractural Context, John R. Schleppenback Jan 2017

Winning The Battle But Losing The War: Towards A More Consistent Approach To Prevailing Party Fee Shifting In The Contractural Context, John R. Schleppenback

Florida A & M University Law Review

As a general matter, history has not been very kind to losers. In the turmoil of the Middle Ages, loss on the battlefield could also mean the looting of one's property, the sacking of one's home, and potentially even the assault of one's spouse. The nineteenth century was the era of "to the victors belong the spoils," meaning that an electoral win allowed the prevailing political party a complete monopoly on political appointments and government contracts to the exclusion of the loyal opposition. Even today, professional athletes would sooner face anonymity than defeat on the playing field, living by the …


How U.S. Procedure Skews Tort Law Incentives, Jonathan T. Molot Jan 1997

How U.S. Procedure Skews Tort Law Incentives, Jonathan T. Molot

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.